Chapter 16
Jamie had not intended to enjoy the carnival.
That was the first sensible thing he told himself.
The second was that he was only there because the children were there.
The third was that the whole arrangement was an irritant, and he repeated that one to himself several times before abandoning it entirely.
The village green had been turned into a riot of canvas stalls, hanging ribbons, game tables, and makeshift benches.
Children ran in every direction, voices overlapped, and someone near the edge of the field played a fiddle with admirable disregard for anyone who preferred silence. The smell of sugared nuts, fried dough, damp grass, and smoke from a dozen small fires drifted through the air.
Maisie tugged at his hand. “Can we go there?”
He looked down. “Where?”
She pointed at a painted board where men and women were tossing rings onto pegs, the stall keeper laughing at some poor soul’s third miss. Duncan’s eyes had already narrowed in the direction of the game.
“You want to try that?” Jamie asked.
Duncan folded his arms at once. “No.”
That was the boy’s answer to nearly everything that interested him too much.
Eloise was a few paces away with Lawrence, and Jamie had noticed the reluctance with which she had accepted his company.
Lawrence appeared entirely untroubled, walking beside her with polished ease.
Jamie made himself look away. It was not difficult to do, not because he did not care, but because he cared too much.
He turned his attention back to Duncan, who had drifted toward the ring-toss with the suspicious expression he wore whenever he expected to be disappointed.
“You may try,” Jamie said.
“I am not trying.”
“You are already staring at it.”
“I am not.”
Maisie gave a small sound of delight and hurried forward before either of them could stop her. “I want that one,” she said, pointing at the rings.
The stall keeper smiled. “You may have one go, my dear, if your guardian will pay.”
Jamie looked at Duncan, who looked back as though the whole matter had become a challenge, and put a coin on the table.
Duncan took one ring, then another. He missed the first throw entirely, and the second came close, and the third struck the peg and bounced away. His jaw tightened, and he looked at the rings abhorrently.
Jamie stepped forward. “Your wrist is too stiff.”
“No, it is not.”
“It is.”
He took the ring from the boy’s hand and angled it properly.
“Watch.” He took the ring lightly between thumb and forefinger, because the throw was never in the arm.
It was in the wrist, a small and precise motion taught to men who had to judge distance and wind and motion at sea.
He flicked the ring, and it landed neatly around the peg.
Duncan stared, his carefully controlled delight evident.
“Again,” Jamie said.
Duncan took the next ring and copied the motion exactly. It landed. He froze for one magnificent second, then looked up at Jamie with open and unmistakable pride.
A warmth moved through Jamie that he did not have a ready word for. He said nothing. He only reached out and put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, and Duncan did not shrug it away. That, more than anything, felt like a victory.
“He did it!” Maisie clapped her hands.
“He did,” Jamie said.
The stall keeper handed over a small, ribboned toy, and Maisie accepted it with seriousness that made Jamie think of a queen receiving a tribute.
“It was not difficult,” Duncan muttered.
“No?” Jamie said.
“No.”
Jamie’s hand stayed on his shoulder until the boy had turned the matter over in his mind and decided he liked it.
He saw the satisfaction settle into the set of Duncan’s mouth, and knew it for what it was.
The child wanted to be taught. Wanted to be noticed.
Wanted to be taken seriously, and Jamie had been too slow to give him any of it.
His gaze drifted toward Eloise without his meaning it to. She had stopped a little farther down the green with Lawrence near a stall selling painted ribbons and carved trinkets, and Lawrence had leaned close to speak to her. Her posture remained polite, but not warm.
Maisie tugged at his other hand. She had drifted away with Catriona toward one of the games and returned now, pointing toward a puppet show beginning beneath a striped canopy. “Come watch,” she said, and he let himself be pulled there and sat on the grass beside her.
The puppets were crude, painted wood and cloth, but Maisie narrated their motivations to him in serious whispers, explaining precisely which one was cross with which and why the dragon puppet was, in fact, only misunderstood.
Jamie listened, and at some point a sound came out of him that he did not recognize as his own until it had already happened. A laugh. Rusty and unfamiliar, but real.
Duncan, standing a few feet away with his prize ribbon still in hand, stared at him as though he had seen a ghost. Catriona sat near them through the entire show without speaking, content simply to watch the children and let the afternoon move at its own pace.
She is remarkably easy company, Jamie thought.
When the puppet show ended, Jamie spotted Logan and Clara making their way through the crowd. Clara carried a small posy of ribbons, holding it stiffly in both hands. The absurdity of it nearly made Jamie laugh again.
Logan leaned toward her and said something Jamie could not hear. Clara swatted his arm, and then she smiled. A proper smile, not the guarded one she wore in the kitchen.
Jamie watched it, surprised into stillness.
Logan had no talent for subtle courtship, and seemed entirely aware of the fact, and yet here he was, persisting anyway.
There was no elegance or polish in it. Just stubbornness and perseverance that made a fool of themselves until the other person finally gave in.
Respect reluctantly rose in Jamie. Logan had always been braver than he was in many ways.
He had risked insult, impatience, even ridicule, and had simply kept showing up.
Jamie had spent years being respectable enough to be left alone.
Logan’s approach, he thought, was probably the more honest form of courage.
His gaze found Eloise again. Lawrence had drawn a little closer to her than before, and Eloise was nodding at whatever he said, polite, measured, not warm. Then her gaze drifted over the crowd and fell on Jamie.
For one suspended moment they looked at each other over the heads of strangers, over the noise of the crowd, over every small moving piece of the afternoon.
He did not know what he expected to see there.
Annoyance, perhaps. Hurt, possibly. What he saw instead was something unfamiliar enough to leave him faintly unnerved.
Eloise looked away first. Jamie did not.
“The children seem very fond of their governess,” Catriona said softly beside him.
“They are,” Jamie said.
She looked back toward Maisie, now fascinated by a painted wooden horse, and Duncan, who was pretending to be uninterested. Then she looked at Jamie again. “I think Miss Beauchamp is an exceptional young woman.”
Jamie said nothing. The statement had not been dramatic, which made it harder to answer.
Catriona did not seem to require an answer, seemingly content to watch him.
“She is very good with them,” Jamie said, finally, because he had several responses and none of them suitable.
“Yes,” Catriona said, her mouth softening.
By the time the family gathered for Clara’s picnic, the children were giddy and tired, the best sort of tired, though Jamie did not admit that aloud.
There had been too much sugar and noise and too many bright paper decorations for either child to remain composed for long. Maisie had already lost one ribbon and found another. Duncan had acquired a small prize from one of the games and was pretending indifference toward it.
They decided on the grass near the edge of the green, where Clara had arranged a blanket and baskets of food, the sunlight shifting into a warmer gold as the afternoon softened toward evening.
Maisie ran up to Jamie first. Before he could ask what she was about, she pulled a paper crown from the folds of her skirt and placed it squarely on his head.
He froze. She stepped back and admired the result with grave satisfaction. There was no practical reason to remove it, and so he did not, and Duncan looked torn between derision and envy, which Jamie found equally amusing.
“Where did that come from?” he asked Maisie.
“I found it,” she said, grinning proudly.
Catriona, settling herself near the picnic blanket, laughed softly. Jamie gave her a look that was only half accusing.
Eloise arrived a moment later with Clara and took in the paper crown at once, her brows lifting, before she seemed to make some private judgment about whether it suited him. He found, for reasons he could not have defended, that he was waiting for the verdict.
She smiled. “Your Majesty,” she said.
“Do not begin.”
“That crown appears to have been made for you.”
“That is an insult.”
“It is not.”
“It absolutely is.”
Duncan, watching the exchange with sharp interest, chose that moment to show Eloise his newly learned skill, throwing a small disk with stiff dignity.
She took one look. “That is a good throw.”
His face changed. It appeared he had not expected her to notice. She glanced at Jamie, then back to the boy. “I would say someone taught you well.”
Duncan’s eyes moved to Jamie and back, and a warm feeling rose in Jamie that he did not have a desire to examine.
Maisie sat on the blanket with a piece of bread in one hand and a ribbon in the other.
Clara pointed at a basket. “It goes there.”
Logan moved it anyway. “It looks better here.”
Clara narrowed her eyes. “If you touch that again, I will use this loaf.”
Logan looked pleased. “Noted.”
Catriona made herself comfortable on the blanket beside Eloise.
Eloise lowered her voice. “Duncan finished his sums this morning.”
Catriona nodded. “And Maisie?”
“She read two pages without prompting.”
Jamie caught only the tone, not the words, but Eloise sounded more at ease than she had at dinner.
Lawrence lowered himself near the food. “Clara, your bread is excellent.”
Clara gave a short nod.
Lawrence turned to Maisie. “Did the carnival please you?”
Maisie brightened. “Yes.”
He looked at Duncan next. “I once won a ring-toss game in London.”
Duncan gave him a doubtful look.
Lawrence lifted a hand. “It was likely exaggerated.”
Duncan snorted, still seemingly unamused.
Then, over bread and cheese, Lawrence looked toward the children, then toward Jamie. “Tell me, how did your sister manage the children’s affairs before the accident?” His tone was bland, just interested enough to make the question sound genuine.
Jamie kept his face neutral. The question was too smooth and innocent. It looked like affection and smelled like information.
“Did she keep their finances separate from my brother’s estate?” Lawrence asked with a warm smile.
Nothing in the scene changed visibly, but Jamie’s stomach hardened. The question had been wrapped in family nostalgia, but the core of it was money, trusts, control, and inheritance, and he knew that kind of inquiry well enough to dislike it.
“My sister was a private woman,” he said, deliberately vague.
Lawrence nodded, unfazed. “Of course.” He took a sip from his cup and looked easy again. Too easy.
Jamie noted the question and set it aside, without any visible sign that it had rattled him, which took considerable effort.
The rest of the picnic continued around them. Maisie finished her bread and leaned against Eloise. She slept for a few minutes, then blinked awake and rubbed her eyes.
Duncan practiced his throw again. “Look.”
Eloise nodded. “A good throw.”
Duncan glanced at Jamie.
Eloise followed the glance. “He taught you well.”
Catriona sat near them and looked at the flowers in Maisie’s hand. “You found many.”
Maisie nodded. “Clara said the yellow ones open in the sun.”
Catriona turned to Eloise. “Do they draw from memory yet?”
“Sometimes,” Eloise said. “Sometimes they draw what they expect to see.”
Catriona considered that. “Both are useful.”
Lawrence reached for another piece of bread. “Clara, this is excellent.”
Clara gave a short nod.
Lawrence looked at the children. “I once had a picnic in London ruined by a dog and a cake.”
Maisie stared at him. “A dog?”
“A very determined one,” Lawrence said.
Duncan frowned. “What happened to the cake?”
“It did not survive,” Lawrence said.
Maisie laughed. Duncan tried not to.
Lawrence leaned back on his hands, entirely at ease.
Yet Jamie watched with cool, albeit bewildering, suspicion. Jamie could not forget the earlier question. The one that had begun with family nostalgia and ended too near money.
He turned the phrase over in his mind while the picnic continued, the children growing giddier and more tired, Maisie yawning before she realized she was doing it, Duncan sitting down too quickly and then pretending he had done so for tactical reasons.
The walk home began as the light started to fade enough that the children slowed on the path, weighed down by sweets and ribbons and the long afternoon. Maisie eventually drifted closer to Jamie and, without warning, leaned fully against him.
He looked down. She was asleep. Without waking her, he adjusted his arm beneath her carefully and lifted her against him, the motion drawing a glance from Duncan, who said nothing. Jamie kept walking, Maisie’s breathing soft and even against his coat, her weight oddly grounding.
“Very attached, it seems,” Lawrence said, barely loud enough to be heard.
Jamie’s expression remained neutral. Lawrence’s gaze drifted toward the sleeping girl, then back to him.
“Have you given thought,” Lawrence asked lightly, “to the children’s trust, and who oversees it now that both parents are gone?”
The question hit harder than the first had. “The solicitor handles it,” Jamie said, his voice even with effort.
“Of course. Of course.” Lawrence sounded perfectly agreeable, perfectly interested, and yet his eyes did not match the tone, and Jamie felt the shift as keenly as if the man had stepped closer.
The easy smile remained. The intent behind it did not, and that brief exchange altered the afternoon, not dramatically, but the way a room turns colder after a door opens somewhere unseen.
Jamie looked down at Maisie. Her small hand was tucked against his coat, and she slept on, untroubled.
Lawrence is not here for the children. The thought dawned with such clarity that was hard and unmistakable. Jamie did not know what Lawrence wanted. Only that it was not what he claimed.
By the time the house came back into view at the top of the drive, Jamie was turning the suspicion over with increasing unease, and no small amount of anger, and the fact that the afternoon had otherwise been pleasant only made the realization worse.